Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:45740 comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer:251
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!ucsd!hub!fender
From: fender@banana.ucsb.edu (Chen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer
Subject: Re: RE programs crashing in Desqview
Message-ID: <4170@hub.UUCP>
Date: 5 Mar 90 19:15:09 GMT
References: <48e591a9.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> <29312@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Sender: news@hub.UUCP
Reply-To: fender@cornu.ucsb.edu
Distribution: usa
Organization: UC Santa Barbara Computer Science
Lines: 39
In-reply-to: phil@pepsi.amd.com's message of 27 Feb 90 20:54:18 GMT

In article <29312@amdcad.AMD.COM> phil@pepsi.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes:

   In principle a 386 PC should be able to run DOS jobs in a 
   virtual 8086 and any crashes should not affect the other jobs.
   In practice I do not know if DV does this. I think DV still
   runs in real mode even on a 386. However, OS/2 R 2 is supposed
   to use the virtual 8086 mode.

DV runs in real mode, but it's qemm.sys that runs in protected mode,
then dv uses the qemm to use the expanded memory.  If you notice, if
you try to run protected mode software while qemm.sys is installed,
but dv.com is not running, you'll get an error message saying you
already have protected mode software running.

My personal opinion:  DV is good, but not great.  My biggest problem
is running a program and having the video monitor make a clicking
noise, then blanking out, and crashing so hard that I have to hard
re-boot.  The software reboot does not work, meanwhile the monitor is
whining at high pitch.  Extra annoying.  I re-setup DV, saying the
monitor should use synchronized access, and it seem to "minimize" the
problem.  i.e. it doesn't happen as often, about once a week, and
un-reproducable.  

Also, when running prodigy with DV, the screen colors are wrong.  It
came up right only once, and then when I switched windows, it reverted
to the wrong colors.  

I have successfully been logged in on Procomm, formatting a disk in
BigDos, and printing with WordPerfect all at the same time, which is
slightly impressive compared to losing with just DOS.  Yet, it pales
in comparison to UNIX, which I use at school.  DOS, DV, and
Window/386 have a long way to go until they're great products.



--
John Chen  c/o Assoc. for Computing Machinery| CSIL-ize your life.  Are you
University of California at Santa Barbara    | using the best tools that you
Santa Barbara, Ca.  93107                    | can??????????????